Page 36 of Wildfire Witch

“Break my maidenhead, oh amorous suitor,” I teased.

He snorted, holding me closer with a shake of his head.

“Deflower this warm and willing maiden,” I said more dramatically, complete with a small swoon.

Ceridor looked me in the eye, head tilted. “Go on,” he invited. “Do you have any more euphemisms?”

I put a finger to my chin. “I would also saydefile my purity,but I think we can both agree I lost that a long time ago,” I said thoughtfully. “If you think about it, the old ways of talking about a woman’s virginity were wrapped up in a lot of misogyny. A bunch of focus on the value of innocence and abstinence?—”

“Please focus, lady alchemist,” he interrupted.

“I am awaiting my second deflowering, sir,” I said playfully.

He sighed fondly, framing my face between his hands. “I love you. I have loved you for all but a small sliver of the beginning of my life, and I will love you through the rest of it.” It felt like another vow, which he sealed with a kiss.

I hooked my hand around his neck. “I love you too. And when this is all over…when my curse is gone, I want to settle down with you again. I want to live the life with you we never got to finish,” I vowed back. We shared another kiss while he angled my hips and I wrapped my legs around him.

His length brushed through the slickness of my pussy lips and he drew in a sensitive hiss. “So hot, firefly,” he murmured.

I only felt the pleasant chill of the fae magic that clung to every inch of his skin. “Not too hot?” I asked, biting into my kiss-swollen bottom lip.

He sheathed himself in one long, sure stroke, holding my hips to his. Those lust-darkened silver eyes rolled as we groaned together. “Not too hot,” he confirmed.

The world spiraled lazily by while he ran his hands through my hair, moving slowly at first, before my body loosened up for him. I focused on his face to keep me grounded, watched the pleasure and relief that played over it and the single-minded devotion that sparked in his eyes when our gazes met.

Once I was ready, we came together with the same clothes-pulling urgency as his old returns from the Wind Court. Fucking like each length of time away was an unbearable parting. It was still our truth. Only this time, I felt our magic also intertwining. Motes of air spiraled through my core, circulating into my bloodstream while he pumped into my willing heat.

Air pried its way to my heart and the phoenix spirit, who had hunkered down and shaded her awareness of what I was doing, to be polite. Aodhnait grasped Ceridor’s magic with gentle talons and threaded it where it needed to go.

I came with Ceridor, trembling from the cool liquid rush that filled me on his last thrust. Then my back arched, and I cried out, clinging to him through a wave of electric pain-to-pleasure that lit me from head to toe. My sensitive skin burned, then tingled, then took on the chill of the sky and I went limp in his concerned hold with an exhilarated laugh.

“Firefly?” he asked, panting.

I lifted my right arm and showed him the back of my hand, sure without looking that it now bore the bold black triangle and line symbol of the air element. “We’re connected.” I grinned and his face broke into the broadest, most excited expression I’d seen since my first life with him.

He took my wrist and pressed a kiss to the mark. “Properly handfasted once more.” He removed the glamor from the half sleeve of fae and elemental symbols gracing his arm, which were dark like new ink, except for the occasional mote of air or fire that gave the lines a multicolored bubble that traveled through them. They pulsed, alive with an infusion of energy.

“We are more stable. You should be able to use some magic that combines fire and air without us overheating,”Aodhnait reported.

“We should try it,”I thought back to her with excitement.

She raised an invisible brow.“And electrocute your new yet old mate?”

Oh. Well, she had a point. I gathered up Ceridor’s arm, pressing a kiss to my favorite mark, the cloud on the inside of his wrist, before tracing it with the tip of my tongue. His eyelids fell into a smolder, promising a lot more pleasure if I kept this up.

He ran his thumb over my cheek. “Now that we are properly bound once more, there’s something I need to say.”

His tone had taken a turn towards serious, though he still held me with one hand splayed on my lower back, our legs casually twined. He pulled me in further and I tucked my head underhis chin and relaxed my eyes. We pirouetted gently with the relatively calm drafts through this section of the sky.

Ceridor held me like he never wanted to let me go. His cool, soothing voice vibrated through me. “When you died the first time, I had no idea what happened. The marks that symbolized my binding to you flared up with agony for the duration of your immolation and went dormant afterward. But they remained, faded when you were too young to be handfasted, and darkening when you came of age. Every time you died, I felt it.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “You suffered so much because of my curse…”

“Don’t be, love. It’s through no fault of your own that Morfran was a coward and cursed you while I was away. In the meantime, I sought all the help you could imagine. Healers, wise men, and finally a seer, who read my palm and our handfasting marks and told me what was happening. She explained your curse, and that I was one mate of several that you would need to achieve stability. She said most of your men hadn’t even been born yet.” He released a small, self-conscious laugh at the thought.

“You’ve had some time to come to terms with all this,” I murmured.

He brushed his hand over my hair. “I didn’t need time to come to terms with anything. However many men I must share you with, I will, be it the two you’ve now met or ten more. Whatever it takes to keep you safe and whole by my side.”

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